Carl Edwards did what he needed to do again at Texas and gained some ground on Jimmy Johnson.

The problem is whether he was able to gain enough ground to keep his championship hopes alive. There is still a bit over one hundred points separating the two and all JJ has to do is get a couple of seventh place finishes at Phoenix and Homestead to gain his third consecutive title.

Edwards‘ win came on a late race gamble by crew chief Bob Osborne to not take fuel and slow the #99 down to conserve fuel. Cousin Carl had this to say about that decision:

Never had Bob yell at me for going too fast, but he did tonight. I just was so nervous that we were missing something. I thought there’s no way we can go this slow, save this much fuel, and still be leading this race. They did a really great job, though. That was cool. You know, of all the ways you can win a race, fuel mileage isn’t the most exciting one. But we had I believe a dominant car all day. The car was very fast. We got behind on that last pit stop. It was very cool to still win the thing.

The other sub plot from Texa involved a couple of non-Chase drivers. Juan Pablo Montoya and David Gilliland got into a couple of shunts that resulted in Gilliland pulling a full “Scott Speed” on JPM and sent him into the wall at 180mph.

Who are you believing–Montoya’s “He wrecked me” or Gilliland’s “I miscalculated”?

Give us your thoughts and we could use your comments on this week’s ON PIT ROW. You can listen from 5-7pm ET at www.onpitrow.com. Or call us direct at 877-502-8255 and you could win a Kevin Harvick bobblehead if your call is deemed The Shell Gunk Free Call of the Week.